J Square Design

The Portfolio

Client: Opsware Inc. / Hewlett-Packard

Project: Server Automation (SAS)

Launched: Version 5.5 in July 2006 and presently supported
as HP Server Automation

Opsware Inc. was a technology start-up whose purpose was to provide automation
tools which allow datacenter administrators to better manage large numbers
of devices. A typical datacenter would have a 20:1 ratio of devices to
administrators, but with Opsware software the goal was to raise that by
an order of magnitude to something like 200:1.

In 2005, Opsware had concluded that while the foundation of the Server
Automation tool was sound, the user interface had become a competitive
disadvantage. They had begun to lose deals to their major competitor,
and it was clear the deciding factor was that users found the tool to
be too complex and difficult to use. The user interface team was reorganized, and
I was brought onboard drive major changes to the UI to turn it from being
a disadvantage to being a major selling factor.

The original user interface for SAS had been developed when Opsware was
a services company called Loudcloud. It was a rudimentary web interface,
but was found to be both slow and difficult to use. Prior to my joining
the company, the product and engineering team had made the decision to
migrate from the web to a Java/Swing based user interface which would allow them to
store more information on the client, thereby allowing faster access and
manipulation of the data with regard to sorting and filtering. My job
was then to craft the user model for this Java client.

Some of the interesting features of the Opsware SAS
user interface were:

Multi-tier navigation system to support environments scaled to include
10,000+ devices

Individual windows for each object type, which supported browsing
of detailed information on a per object basis

Integration model that allows for connectivity and shared data with
other Opsware applications (NAS,
VAM, and OMDB)

The result of this effort was that customer sales climbed rapidly, and
Opsware was able to easily distance itself from its nearest competitor.
This eventually led to Opsware being recognized as the undisputed market
leader in datacenter automation products, and eventually being sold
to HP in 2007 for $1.6 billion.